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Berlusconi says Germans deny concentration camps existed

Rome: Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi provoked fresh outrage from his political opponents by suggesting that Germany did not acknowledge the existence of World War Two concentration camps.

Mr Berlusconi triggered the latest in a long line of controversies when he took another swipe at his old foe Martin Schulz, the German president of the European parliament and the centre-left candidate to lead the EU Commission.

Referring to the storm created in 2003 when he jokingly offered Mr Schulz a film part as a concentration camp "kapo", an inmate appointed as overseer, Mr Berlusconi told a party meeting that the comments were made in a spirit of ironical humour.

"I said, nicely, that I'd get him a job given that a film director friend of mine was planning to make a film on the German concentration camps," he said.